1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a printing method.
2. Related Art
In recent years, ink jet printing apparatuses that print a pattern or the like on a recording medium by ejecting ink from a print head to the surface of the recording medium have been used in textile printing for a fabric (a recording medium) such as cotton, silk, wool, synthetic fibers, mixed spinning. In such printing apparatuses, since a printing operation is performed over a long time while a long recording medium is being transported in a roll-to-roll system, it is necessary to suspend the printing operation for maintenance of a print head. Thus, JP-A-2014-47443 discloses an ink jet recording apparatus (printing apparatus) that suspends and resumes a printing operation halfway without causing a reduction in the value of a print.
Even in the printing apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2014-47443, however, a position at which a printing operation is suspended and resumed may be visually recognized more or less. For example, when a printing operation is suspended in the middle of a picture of a person, an object, or the like, a color unevenness, a color difference, or the like may be clearly observed and thus the commercial value of a print may be reduced. This may cause a problem of a reduction in the productivity of the printing apparatus.